The rest of your life starts now. A short recap.

It seems pointless to have a space in the universe chronicling the trials and tribulations dealing with surgery removing cancer from my body and not give the play by play of the juiciest details: the first day, the anesthesia, the roommates, the morphine, etc.

Where to start? I was told to arrive at the hospital at 5:30 am on Friday, February 15th. In a way I was relieved about this, feeling that I would be too tired to really get nervous (that didn't really happen), and also that I wouldn't spend the day pacing around waiting for the imminent five hour surgery. Needless to say, I spent Thursday night (Valentine's Day) trying to keep my mind off of the operation, but when it came time to actually go to sleep that became impossible. Thoughts running through my mind ran the gambit: am i going to die, what will the hospital look like, will it be cold tomorrow, am i forgetting to pack anything, what if i dont wake up from anesthesia, what if the anesthesia doesn't knock me out, why did that guy on TV drink silver? With my alarm set for 4am, I don't think I actually fell asleep until 1am. However, those three hours of sleep didn't leave me drowsy and disoriented, but rather I popped out of bed with my stomach in knots, ready as I was going to be to get this over with.

We were supposed to arrive at the hospital at 5:30 am, but actually arrived at 4:45, forcing a 45 minute wait. Everything went fairly smoothly and I was in my gown, in my bed, getting an epidural injected into my spine at roughly 7am, which left me feeling a bit drunk - a very welcome feeling. I was wheeled into the operating room on my bed at about 8am, and the nervousness had, for the most part, left me. I knew it was out of my hands, and the numbing morphine being injected into my nervous system was also helping take the edge off. I vaguely remember having the anesthesia put over my face, and the next thing I knew my eyes were creeping open in the recovery room with two thoughts popping into my head: 1) where are my glasses (my first words), and 2) holy shit my whole body hurts.

The doctor was there to explain the surgery in short detail, but my attention span was about that of a cocker spaniel and could only listen to 4 words at a time before I either drifted off to sleep or had some incoherent thing to say (when one nurse emptied my pee bag, I said - in ron burgandy voice - "impressive... just as I expected"). What I did hear from the doctor was that the tumor on my side did not appear to be a sarcoma, as originally believed, but rather a desmoid, which is still cancerous, but has a lower chance of spreading. To ensure the entire tumor was removed, the operation entailed: a portion of 4 ribs to be removed, a 16 inch incision to be made, my latissimus muscle to be moved on my back (effectively eliminating its ability to function), and the muscle around the incision (including part of my oblique, and the muscle above and around my ribs) to be removed as well. I wish that laundry list of changes ended with some mastercard reference, like: acquiring spiderman's ability to shoot web out of my fingers, priceless. Unfortunately, my big payoff was that I get to deal with a ton of pain, but also don't have a dangerous tumor living in my body. I'm fine with that.

I arrived in my room, 1421A, at around 9pm Friday night, where I would meet a bevy of nurses, a host of interesting patients, my roommate mr. morton, and a handful of amazing doctors over the next 4 days. The stories of those will come in subsequent posts.

Have a good one

Matt